Uganda To Regulate Cryptocurrencies To Reduce Scam

Wilfred Michael

Reporter

27 November 2018,

19:08

An unregulated crypto ecosystem has allowed scammers to get the better of unsuspecting Ugandans, for this reason, members of the country's parliament have revealed that they will regulate the space to protect citizens.

While speaking to the Ugandan Parliament on Nov 21, Minister of Finance, David Bahati told fellow lawmakers that a Nation Payment System Bill which will also provide cover for cryptocurrencies had been drafted. The said draft proposal have gotten approval from the country's Cabinet and should hit the floor of the parliament by next month.

In his words, Mr. Bahati said,

“In October, Cabinet approved the National Payment System Bill. We intend to bring it to parliament next month so that it caters for all these forms of digital financial transactions,”

Even though he didn't provide specific details of what the bill will cover, we trust that it will at least have enough rules to protect investors from fraud.

Crypto Pyramid Scheme Defraud Ugandans

The country's crypto industry has seen considerable growth with the last couple of months with the highest of them being the launch of Binance Uganda, a subsidiary of giant crypto exchange Binance.

However, there has been almost similar growth in the number of crypto scams targeted at Ugandan natives. As per the report, there have been many of them including ones where legislators were defrauded.

Telex One, a pyramid scheme and another one called D9 club has defrauded Ugandans of thousands of dollars. Speaking on this matter, Mathias Mpuuga, a member of parliament (MP), reckoned that the challenge they face is that “while this (fraud) is taking place, there is no legal framework for supervising these players.”

He subsequently urged the country to at least tell the “country (who) the cryptocurrency dealers operating (are).”

A regulatory framework would surely be an excellent option for Uganda at this point and will put the country on the same list as India and France who are also working to provide some cover for the new-age industry.